Thursday, November 1, 2012

Screenshots and the Chat Manager

I have started on the scene transitions and have completed the general layouts for the title and the mission briefing screen. Here are the screen shots for the current screens:

These are just preliminary screens that probably won't survive for launch. However, they provide a basic framework to start this phase of development. In addition, I have the triggers created for the first first briefing and have updated all of the audio triggers for the first and second tutorial missions to be "chat" friendly.

My current focus is on a basic chat window. This window will have limited functionality at this point of the development cycle. It's primary purpose is to accept and display text received from other scripts. The primary purpose is to display dialogue from the instructor at this time. Consequently, it will be simplistic at this stage of development. It should have a method to receive new text from the SoundManager or another script. It will take that text and display on the screen for the player. The goal is to give a semi transparent background to keep it from interfering with the player's view of the battle space.

The briefing screen will be primary location to test this new feature. I'll have to nail down the timing issues within the game. The text should only display right after the start of the dialog. This means that queued speeches should be ignored until the it is actually executed by the sound manager. This means that the sound manager and chat manager have to work closely together.